Riaing Banks vs Falling Bank
I wonder what BBs you think are getting better and which are getting worse. I am at Barclays and it's clear we are getting worse as we just lost dozens of senior MDs and replaced them with people from MM firms. I wonder what the broader IB world looks like in terms of which banks are rising and which are falling. Also would prefer RBC not be mentioned since A) it's very contentious and B) no matter what you think of it or WSO's reputation of it, it's pretty clear that the bank is rising more than falling given all the senior hires + steady growth in deal flow over these last few years.
Edit: Sorry for the misspelled title earlier, clearly too many light nights have been pulled and that attention to detail is slipping.
Based on the most helpful WSO content, here's a detailed look at the current landscape of rising and falling banks in the investment banking world:
Rising Banks:
Baird:
Wells Fargo:
Guggenheim:
Ardea:
JPMorgan (JPM):
Bank of America (BofA):
Falling Banks:
Barclays:
Citi:
Additional Insights:
This overview should provide a clearer picture of the current trends in the investment banking landscape, helping you understand which banks are on the rise and which are facing challenges.
Sources: Growing/Rising and Shrinking/Falling Banks, Growing/Rising and Shrinking/Falling Banks, Which banks are poised for growth in the next 5-10 years?, Investment Banks in 10 years - Ranking
Rising:
Tobin and Co - about to go on a generational run
UBS - hyper focused on IB right now
Evercore - improving talent through diversity hiring
Credit Suisse - will rise from the dead like Jesus and win mandates
Falling:
Centerview - overrated
GS TMT - no deal flow
JPM HC - heard there is no deal flow but great work life balance
underrated comment lmao
I think bank cannot rise! How bank rise? No leg to stand up hahahaha. Bank is building not living thing. Cannot fall for same reason!! Who trip the bank and fall on knees!!! Hahahahahahaha no no no. Bank has no leg! It is building!
Depends on who you ask — I think you see some BBs like MS and even partly UBS turning back to their wealth management wing for revenue generation (Ofc UBS is a controversial take). But a lot of BBs can’t handle the credit pressure which has and will continue to hurt their market share in IB. MM places like Houlihan look good on paper but they are cranking out smaller deals that will eventually severely burn out because that type of fee generating model just isn’t sustainable and worsens turnover. I think Jefferies has done a solid job at maintaining their position while being a firm that focuses on ECM and M&A advisory (two areas that haven’t been doing so hot).
But again, if the IPO and M&A market jolted back right now, clients would immediately choose these “failing” BBs over some up-and-coming balance sheet bank. The truth is brand value takes a while to erode in the Americas when it comes to the top fee generating businesses — You are less likely to get fired as a corporate executive for hiring a BB that fucks up a deal than some random rising star firm.
UBS,MS, and Citi are prob the most aggressive transition into WM firms. UBS and MS has largely been doing it for a while, whilst Citi seemingly started it recently with the whole Bora Bora thing. I think UBS is primarily looking to grow their Americas IB division though not as a firm number 1 focus but as part of UBS's general expansion into the Americas(they are a large Asian WM+IB as well as European one, so Americas is their last frontier that they can have relatively "easy" growth in especially after getting lucky with CS + all the disgruntled Barclays rainmakers). MS has continued to grow their WM, but of course, they are and remain an actual top IB player so it makes sense that WM is their growth market as there is still some room there(MS is of course a top player there too, but fact of the matter is that WM is much more fragmented than IB is). Citi is just a new pivot, so it's hard to comment.
IMO, UBS is already primarily a WM-focused bank and clearly will continue to be which should be pretty good in the long run for them as an overall bank given the "safer" nature of WM revenues, same with MS but MS has the added benefit of also being a large IB player(they are both large IB and large WM globally while UBS isn't a large Americans IB just yet). As for Citi, nobody really knows since it's such a new transition but it can end up going really well especially given how big Citi is, the management just needs to be focused and trim down all the bloat from Citi(which is already happening to some extent).
Outside the firms you mentioned, some musings about others :
Barclays and DB are just f'ed in the long-run. Their market cap compared to the other historical BBs is frankly disgustingly bad, DB has been flat as a stock since 2008(Citi was as well before the restructuring, but has seemingly finally seen an uptick). DB has seemingly become a corporate bank that does some IB mostly in Europe, no longer really a global bank. Barclays is however even more fucked because its commercial side is weaker than IB and IB's side is stronger. The only problems are A) they are losing their rainmakers, B) they are hiring terrible MDs as replacements, C) they cannot afford to compete with their European peers in terms of IB investments as the other firms can be more aggressive in IB hiring/guaranteed bonuses cus those other firms have lots of non-IB revenue... Barclays doesn't, D) They were previously well known for being the number 1 European IB globally... this YTD they are behind UBS in league tables and they were last year as well. Barclays isn't just a falling bank, it's very structurally flawed, I would say even to a greater extent than DB given revenue mixes(DB European commercial banking is still fine certainly relative to Barclays despite all the scandals with the Russia stuff).
Also edit: Sorry about the title misspelling. Also if you can't tell given the focus of my response... I am a very disgruntled Barclays banker who hates this bank for losing all the good seniors, bringing in shitty MD's, and then firing fellow juniors because we didn't "meet expectations as a bank".
Advice for incoming Barc summer analysts?
Bump of updated views on Citi
The worst American BB to be in right now for IB in the Americas given the restructuring, but would still rather be there than any European BB or other large banks like RBC or Jeff. I think I harped on all 3 of the European BBs above hard enough to justify why.
JPM is the rising star. Barclay's and DB are fading out. Jefferies will continue a slight rise. GS will slightly decline, and so will MS. Evercore will moderately decline. JPM is already number 2 in M&A and thats with most deals being all cash. They have considerably more cash to loan for LBOs which they can use as leverage for M&A. Not to mention an amazing business on all fronts. Once rates drop and LBOs come back we will see JPM take number 1 in M&A. GS will be death by a thousand cuts. Increased pressure from EBs on whale deals, not enough capital for massive LBOs, and constant rain maker snipes from other firms. They will still be a solid number 2 with MS settling into 3 for the BB. Barclay's and DB have suffered from rainmaker losses Jefferies has hired well Evercore has been destroyed by DEI everyone else there isn't a clear direction for. But those will be the general ranking changes.
I think Barclay's downfall is just UBS's gain in particular though, so they should reverse each other in terms of view if you believe Barclays is going down UBS must be going up. Barclays lost almost all their rain makers exclusively to UBS or at least the prominent ones(source: am at Barclays). I think Barclays and UBS are in the same tier now especially now UBS deal flow in the Americas has picked up in what they are strong in(LevFin/Sponsors activity which they are already better than Barclays in as per rankings for the year in terms of sponsor lead lefts, and is seemingly catching up in M&A the shorter time frame you look into), which is a distinct step up for UBS. I think they will overtake Barclays within the upcoming 3-5 years. Agree on all other points, but want to note that MS's growth lever is WM and they are very good at that... GS has seemingly been trying to find a similar growth lever but has failed massively recently(look at Marcus as a case study).
100% agree on both points. UBS when they finally sort out the CS situation and intergrate the Barclay's rain makers could be the number 4 BB If it all goes extremely well. More likely be a strong competitor for the mid BBs. I am curious do you ever see MS or GS falling out of the top BB?
what are Evercore's minority-adjusted financials looking like?
From a pure revenue perspective they are infact up... adjusted for headcount and average PE exits... definitely down from where they were. Of course they aren't awful. However banking is a slow moving industry. The effects of this won't be fully felt for years out. In that time EVR could very well fallout of the top EBs.
Thoughts on ING? I understand they're now investing into their Americas M&A platform and have recently hired some MDs to kickstart that journey. I know that their M&A practice focuses on Energy, Infrastructure, Food & Ag, and TMT. They also had a lateral position open a while back and I was rejected but I'm curious what everyone thinks about this firm and it's trajectory in the Americas?
Theyre not even relevant in Europe aside from the Netherlands in M&A/ECM . Despite them making solid investments now, they will never be a lead left or lead advisor for landmark deals until they acquire a major investment bank.
I tend to agree that aggressive DEI hiring hurts firms, but is there any evidence for the claim that "DEI destroyed Evercore" or similar that we can point to? I have this discussion all the time but never really have data to show for it. Any thoughts appreciated
WSO just has a lot of conservatives. When browsing WSO it's important to note which comments to take seriously vs. which comments to not. We are all ultimately influenced by our political beliefs + personal experiences and so that will reflect in people's commentary on firms. For example, the average UBS, Citi, or Barclays employees probably all hate their firm more than the average elsewhere because of all the firing those firms have done. Same with BOFA but for their other tragic issues this year regarding the FIG associate. Ultimately, for browsing WSO, you should read what people say and try to do further research to see if what they say makes sense. It's also important to note just because someone is disgruntled, it doesn't mean they should be dismissed: just that a clear bias against something exists. Again harping on Barclays, Barclays has indeed lost a lot of their rainmakers and practically everyone both internally and externally(except maybe the residential UBS employees, who btw never worked at Barclays so don't know who the strong Barclays MDs were) agree with that statement. Thus, just because I said it doesn't make it untrue, same with my market cap and revenues point as both are just factual information that you can pull from the respective firm's public filings or the global league tables point(pull it from deal logic), etc.
What about the boutiques?
Too big and too many names who are boutiques to give commentary on all. I think the biggest fall is Lazard, they have been doing horrendously YTD and are below firms they frankly shouldn't be below like Jeff and RBC in the M&A global league tables and DB remains the only BB they are above(this is a huge cop-out though because IB clearly isn't DB's focus). They are still an EB officially just purely off their reputation but the deal flow has fallen off a cliff. Centerview and Evercore are clearly on the rise, I mean they are top 10 in the global leauge tables despite not doing financing work, that's enough said right there. Very strong franchises going from strength to strength in terms of actual deal flow, no matter what conservatives on this website think of them because of their hiring policies(banks are allowed to hire whoever they want, they have that freedom lol). I frankly don't follow the EB space as much nor keep up with a lot of the EB kids as the EB kids are mostly all extreme hardos who are working 100+ hours... not exactly easy to keep up with so sorry I couldn't keep more than very basic color.
Edit : I'd rather be at Barclays than Lazard, and that's saying a lot given what I have said earlier about Barclays in this thread. Barclays best groups have similar exits if not slightly better than Lazard and way better deal flow(you will still close stuff there, Lazard that's not looking likely)
Best Barc groups for exit opps? I have heard PUI, Sponsors (hard to get though), Healthcare, Industrials, Tech, CR. Would you say that is an accurate order as well?
Liontree def going up
Ik bofa has been getting a ton of shit recently but is it still the 4th best BB?
Yes very clearly - especially given Barc hemorrhaging and Citi somewhat struggling with the restructuring. Citi still better than the European BBs for sure though and JPM/MS still a small but significant notch above BofA
Trying....not....to....comment...about....my....bank
Rising: Cowen
Congrats on TD
Citi revenue up 50% yoy, jane fraser cooking
Okay intern
I see no difference anymore between finance and my time at college lol. I thought the top/mid/bottom tier banks was enough, but now we have rising and falling as if this was greekrank
Unironcially this is a more important question than the tiers lol. Being in a failing bank sucks: so much worry about firing and declining deal flow/senior quality makes your life hell. Trust me I would know with the whole Barclays thing. Have realized this is info that I should've def looked more into before starting
Turns out Aphi no longer wanting to pair with you for homecoming (your rainmakers leaving) really does mean you’re falling in the ranking…
Has anyone heard anything on Wells Fargo?
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